Welby is deluded to think we’re a kind society

The church confuses virtue signalling with true virtue, while cruelty and indifference abound

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has taken a hammering for claiming that the BBC didn’t display the same integrity over its role in the Jimmy Savile scandal as the churches had done over allegations of child abuse in their own ranks.

The archbishop was immediately accused of hypocrisy. The broader point he made was perhaps more interesting. “I think,” he observed, “we are a kinder society, more concerned with our own failures, more willing to be honest where we go wrong.”

A kinder society? Really? True, there’s huge emphasis on being a nice person. There is far less racial prejudice than there was. The needs of disabled people are accommodated and their sporting achievements celebrated. After the Grenfell Tower fire there was a huge…